#dearvtubers: Making the cool innovative thing is great and all, but it's only half of the job. (Stay with me here - I'll break down the why and how behind it.) There are plenty of VTubers playing around with cool ideas every day! But a lot of them are so focused on making the product or experience good - while discovery just gets left to the algogods. Well, that's one possible strat...but that doesn't leave you with much agency (cue "the algo hates me!" or "people just don't care" complaints). And honestly...you've worked so hard on your Cool New Thing, so discoverability really isn't something that should be fully left to chance or luck. "But RAINA, shouldn't good stuff get found on its own?" Sure, sometimes the algo catches it. But virality is NOT the best way to judge the quality of your ideas, or your execution of them. Think of how many "hidden gems" and "best-kept secrets" you know of - great work goes unnoticed all the time. If you're making something new and cool that you think should matter to more than just yourself, and you're doing your craft to a high standard - then yes, discovery is absolutely a skill issue. Granted, there's still some luck involved, but you can definitely stack the deck in your favor if you've got something fucking cool to promote. So if you don't already have people advocating for you, that job is yours: keep putting your Cool New Thing in front of people, and make it clear why they should care, because it's not always obvious. Yes, I know it’s hard, tiring, and sometimes discouraging when other people aren’t clipping your stuff. But they may just need an example of how to do it - so you gotta be your own best advocate first. "OK, but what do I even say?" You need to find the story moments in the Cool New Thing, and how it would connect to someone else out there - not just narrate that it exists. Take a look at a few different angles to advertise your Cool New Thing - usual way before, better alternative after: The moment "Concert VOD is up!" vs "The exact second Jane VTuber did a death drop while shredding the guitar and the audience lost it (0:47)" The why "New original song out now" vs "I wrote this about the year I got constantly bombarded by an ex and almost quit." The making-of/behind the scenes "New model reveal tonight!" vs "My rigger and I spent four months making one blink feel otherworldly - see how we did it and find out if it worked tonight on my channel!" The reactions "My con panel went great!" vs "200 strangers had to save my castle together. Someone cried...happy tears, I think." The bridge (great for capturing new audiences outside of core VTuber fans) "Playing [game] tonight!" vs "If you like D&D actual-play, we have that tonight - except chat controls the dice." Same Cool New Thing, different reasons to look at it. Not all of these reasons will stick with viewers the first time, so rotate the angle instead of repeating the exact same pitch. (This will take some practice.) People DO care about new things; they just won't recognize it as new until you show them what's different. Android often had cool new features and advancements first; they just spoke about them like a dry-AF spec sheet. Apple was more known for "telling the story around these features", and made it easier for users to see why it matters to them. [Personal disclaimer: I'm Team Pixel and use one as a daily driver - so if anything, I'm biased the other way.] Chances are, you’re probably too close to your Cool New Thing to see why it may matter to others, which is fair. Viewing something you made with an "objective but kind" lens is hard to do right away - you want to identify what might seem magical and cool to others (which you might think is ordinary), and you don't want to "so what?" your own work until you feel "nothing matters anyway". If you can't see the magic in your own work yet, borrow someone else's eyes: ask a friend which part made them go "wait, what? that's cool!" A caveat: Not everyone will care even if you show your Cool New Thing to them, maybe because it's just not to their taste - and that's okay! It's not always a reflection on you as a person, or a verdict on the quality of your Cool New Thing. "But RAINA, self-promo feels cringe." It will, at first. You're not going to be fearless right away, and you can't wait until you are, because waiting doesn't make you any braver. I get that many people have been shamed for trying to talk about their interests in the past, but only doing it in private won't change the feeling. Start small if you need to: a WIP snippet instead of a big launch post, a reply under someone else's thread encouraging input/sharing of experiences, or show it to your Discord community before your timeline. Small reps still count, as long as someone's watching - you're building the evidence for your mind to know that you CAN do it, so that you can set the fear aside. And yes, there are avoidable missteps. I once saw someone keep mentioning they did a particular style of event first, before one of the big agencies did. More power to you - but that's not a good look, and you've kind of advertised for them anyway. "I did it first" is why it matters to you. Lead with the thing you did and why it matters to them. Flip side: if someone did it before you (or did it better), that doesn’t cancel or invalidate your Cool New Thing. Again, remember Android and Apple: being first isn’t what makes people care - the story is. And "better" depends on who's watching: other people's versions of your Cool New Thing won't always gel with everyone, and your version might end up finding audiences that theirs never did. It's not a zero-sum game. "Cool story, but people outside the VTuber space don't even look at us." Non-VTuber folk are actually often more curious than we realize - they just haven't seen anything yet. So give them a reason to show up, and start from something they already love (peep the D&D bridge example from earlier). And if your current audience doesn't appreciate what you make? Keep sharpening your skills where you are, then (re)package them up and take them to a different or wider audience that will. VTubing is a "comfy" small place, but it's just one of many possible mediums and niches - and there are so many people in the world out there, so you really don't have to stick to catering to existing VTuber fans. Grow the damn pie; don't fight with others over the same slice. "Uh, doesn't all of this still depend on the algo?" Yes, the algo still plays a part - you can’t escape it on any platform. But there’s a difference between waiting on the algorithm and working with it. Showing and telling the story behind your Cool New Thing gives the algorithm better signals (people actually clicking, sharing, sticking around). And plenty of what I've covered here doesn’t necessarily need the algogods' "blessings" at all: your Discord, replies on other people’s threads (where relevant), collabs, other communities, and people sharing your stuff because they want to. You didn’t wait for anyone’s permission to make the Cool New Thing - don’t wait for the algorithm’s permission to be seen either. #RAINArambles Know someone still praying to the algogods? Send this their way.

#dearvtubers: You're probably getting "sell yourself better, treat VTubing like a proper business/job if you wanna grow and succeed" wrong. "Urgh RAINA, this whole business and selling thing is just sleazy as fuck. Plus the economy is ass and my viewers are broke too - I can't just keep milking them. Can't I just be a girl/guy on the internet?" I get it - I thought that for the longest time as well. Totally not helped by the fact I used to work with some REALLY pushy hard-selling types. But we live in a society and you and I need to eat while not being miserable, so stay with me while I reframe a few things. Yes, you CAN just be a silly anime waifu/husbando on the internet! If it's a hobby, you don't owe anyone anything. But the moment you want growth or money, you're already in business - whether you call it that or not. Business is simply an exchange of value between people, and content like VTubing is no different - just that the value being spent may not be money, and what the paying customer receives may not be a product or a service (like a course or a networking server). I spend time watching you, I get your "company" - and maybe learn something, or get a laugh out of it. I spend money to subscribe to your channel, I get to spam your googly-eyed emotes/stickers when I chat with my friends - AND the feeling that I contributed a bit towards your journey. But just because you're selling your presence/content (and it's free) doesn't mean I HAVE to buy by consuming it - and most of you know this! And that's what separates it from milking, which is taking without giving. Your job is to make an offer - in this case, your content - worth choosing and repeatedly showing up for. And to make sure it's coherent. (You might need more time to figure out what your offer truly is before you see a consistent audience, and you might lose some people as you try and pivot around, and that's okay.) It's the same thing for me: the offer I'm "selling" here, if you choose to follow me and spend time reading my work, is my thinking, my experiences, my stories. They come from the near-decade I've spent as a professional creative producer and manager, and they're packaged in posts on this platform. And it's Free.99 to read (though readers can tip me on my bio if they so choose). But I can't just tell someone "I'm a creative producer who brains a lot on industry things and how 2 vtuber lore with equal parts logic and empathy, you should follow me" - I've got to prove that. And the writing I put out aims to prove that yes, I provide what I claim, and I'm worth the follow. (Or at least, that my posts are worth a few minutes out of your doomscrolling routine.) "Alright, how do I make content worth staying around for - and worth paying for?" The short and crude answer: Skill issue. Multiple of them. And the good news is skill issues are something you CAN fix! But the reality is that you most likely have at least something you need to work on - and either you already know what it is, or it's something you haven't discovered yet. If you know it: maybe it's your audio, dead air, messy thumbnails, or mixed messaging in your content. If you don't: maybe it's figuring out which streams people keep coming back for, or what your clips get shared for - and whether you like/want to keep doing them. How-to guides on YouTube et al can fix the skill issues you already know about. The ones you haven't discovered yet will take time and your own legwork - and that's the part most people skip. (I never said skill issues were easy or fast to fix. I also can't diagnose them or offer solutions through a one-to-many post alone - this bit is personal to each creator.) Just remember: having skill issues, or not having people stick around for your content, is NOT a measure of your value or worth as a person. (There are, sadly, plenty of skilled assholes out there - they're also very good at NOT looking like assholes.) "But RAINA, success in content creation is a luck based thing. You yourself mentioned how 'corpo vtubing is pretty much gacha', didn't you?" Yeah, I'm not going to downplay the luck element. But I also firmly believe in making your own luck and upping your odds, and that's by doing as much as possible that's within your control - and what's in your control looks different for everyone. And if you think there's a lot that's out of your control, then maybe the first step is finding ways to get back more agency - one bit at a time - so you can work on your skill issues as a creator. Even if you're neurospicy, chronically ill, or exhausted from your full time job. (Getting that agency back actually matters even more if you're in any of these groups. I was all of the above for years - I only just improved the last two things over the last year.) And for a final business "parallel": Finding and removing bottlenecks is pretty much the norm in business - I do that day in day out for our artists when they don't know what's next, so they can keep working and improving on things. It's no different for you as a VTuber/content creator: growing your following and income means actively hunting down and clearing up those bottlenecks - whether it's things that eat up your time and energy, or all the possible skill issues you have as a performer-slash-solopreneur. To sum it up: business isn't a dirty word - but only if you're looking to do it honestly. So, over to you - what's one "business-y" thing you've been avoiding because it felt sleazy? #RAINArambles